Samo Sound Boy - Begging Please

Samo Sound Boy - Begging Please
Dance music has a tendency to value function over emotion, but you couldn't say that about Sam Griesemer, AKA Samo Sound Boy, who makes tearjerkers out of mushy R&B vocals and soaring synthesizers. On Friend Of Mine, the album he made with Jerome LOL as DJ Dodger Stadium, the duo turned to gospel vocals, hoping to get across the nostalgia, reverence and anxiety they felt toward LA, their hometown. Begging Please, Griesemer's first solo LP, uses the same recipe to more personal ends. It's a breakup album, meant to chronicle the slow dissolve of a relationship, underscored by a series of uncomfortable videos. Compared to the vibrant palette of Friend Of Mine, this one is sad, sad and sadder. It's a less approachable album, but, when Griesemer's formula really comes together, a more affecting one.

Griesemer has a playful touch on the drums and a Hollywood ear for melody, and those talents help make the better parts of Begging Please his best work yet. Case in point: the heart-wrenching title track, which distills the album's central concept into seven-and-a-half minutes of hysteria. You can hear the pleading turn to resignation when the overdriven arpeggios melt into an almost funereal ambient outro. Glossy, upbeat and deflating all at once, "Begging Please" navigates intense emotional states, and its drifting final minutes are the most arresting on the whole LP. "Save Wait Time" conveys loneliness with a wiggling acid line, much as Recondite did with 2012's masterful On Acid. Like the rest of Begging Please, it's deeply sad music disguised as dance floor fare.

But as expressive as "Save Wait Time" might be, Griesemer's choice of vocal sample dulls the impact of his songwriting and production. The same thing happens again on the overblown "What Can I Do"—when you're using a whole chorus of voices to get your own feelings across, it suddenly feels a lot less personal. Another one of the album's highlights, "Lost It," succeeds because its delicate production is laid out clearly without a disembodied voice vying for the spotlight. The bittersweet closer "I Come For You" works where it sounds cheerier—the vocals are ecstatic and convincing when they aren't forced to carry the sadness of something Griesemer is trying to project onto them.

Griesemer and Jerome LOL are working to get actual vocalists for their second DJ Dodger Stadium LP, which seems like a sign that they might be getting tired of this particular sampling schtick. In light of that, Begging Please—built with the same blueprint as the last DJ Dodger Stadium album—seems more like a stopgap on the way to the duo's next album than a major accomplishment in itself. It's a fine companion to Friend Of Mine, and proves dance music can be as poignant as anything else.